Intended as a solid foundation for an affordable gaming box that is also suitable for all-around use, the Budget Box is full of compromises that we believe are good (or at least reasonable). Moving to the upper end of our preferred price range nets a box with decent performance at 1920x1080 in modern games, 8GB of memory, and an SSD for what amounts to an extremely quick setup for the money.

Readers can probably shave a few more dollars here and there when it comes time to make their actual purchases, or they can focus their component picks on their specific needs better. In particular, removing the video card would make the Budget Box a nice starting point for an office or HTPC, and adding a large amount of storage would enable a variety of possible uses.

CPU, motherboard, and memory

The Budget Box processor choice has been an interesting one these past few years. If we inch closer to the upper range of the Budget Box price range, an Intel Core i3-3220 (3.3GHz, 3MB cache, 55W TDP) just barely squeezes in. Aiming a little lower, the Pentium G2120 faces a tougher challenge against AMD's latest Trinity APUs with Piledriver cores and AMD's much more formidable integrated graphics (IGP).

The Budget Box is designed to handle more gaming performance than what an IGP can provide, though. While the AMD A8-5600K looks good compared to the Intel Pentium G2120, a top-of-the-price-range Budget Box gets much more bang with an i3-3220 than the A10-5800K. For gaming in particular, paired with a discrete graphics card, the i3-3220 is significantly more attractive than the AMD equivalent. Power consumption is also better on the Intel parts, although Piledriver's idle power use is now very competitive with Intel's Ivy Bridge parts.

Variations on the Budget Box aimed at lower cost should definitely evaluate the A10-5800K and A8-5600K, especially if a discrete graphics card is not necessary to meet performance requirements.

Balancing features, performance, and cost is a little more delicate with an Intel board in this price range; the H77 chipset does not permit overclocking, but it does support onboard video (should the Budget Box building choose to skip a discrete video card), SATA 6Gbps, and USB 3.0, which is finally standard on Intel 7-series chipsets. Switching to a Z77-based motherboard allows overclocking but costs a few bucks more. This is best done with a K-series processor, which is considerably beyond the Budget Box's price range.

AMD builders will want to look at AMD A85-based boards with Socket FM2 for AMD Trinity APUs. SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 are standard everywhere now, and finding a suitable board generally is not a big deal.

The MSI H77MA-G43 motherboard may be fairly simple, but it supports four DDR3 slots, two PCI-e 2.0 x16 slots (x16 and x4 electrical), two PCI-e 2.0 x1 slots, two SATA 6Gbps ports, four SATA 3Gbps ports, two USB 3.0 ports (plus more internally), VGA and DVI-D out, Ethernet, and all the basics.

Heatsink: make sure to pick up a retail boxed CPU, as the included heatsink/fan is more than adequate. Overclockers buying a P67 board can look at ones such as the Coolermaster Hyper 212+ without worrying too much about cost. And memory, right now, is extremely cheap. We stick with major name brand DDR3-1600 at the JEDEC-standard 1.5v for optimal compatibility. 8GB memory is so cheap it's worth the extra expense in the Budget Box to simply not have to worry about it in the future.

The AMD Radeon HD 7770 GHz Edition is slightly cheaper and puts up very similar performance in a lot of titles, so check the specific games being played as the GTX 650 Ti may not be the best value for everyone. Note that the best value in Radeon HD 7770 GHz cards appears to be the stock-clocked (1000MHz) ones. Paying more for the very fastest ones gets very close to Geforce GTX 650 Ti overclocked territory, erasing the Radeon HD 7770's price advantage.

The biggest upgrade possible for gaming performance in the Budget Box is probably to an even higher-end video card like the Radeon HD 7850 or Geforce GTX 660, so Budget Box builders willing to stretch should consider looking at these and other video cards that get into the Hot Rod's price range.

Conversely, Budget Box builders not worried about gaming can probably omit a video card all together and stick with the integrated graphics offered. Budget Box variations designed for office work or HTPC use would probably be prime targets here, since gaming capability is generally not necessary for such uses. One area we do caution is going lower-end than the video cards recommended in the Budget Box; the Radeon HD 7770 and Geforce GTX 650 Ti seem to be the best values in performance. Going lower-end, especially on the Nvidia side, results in far inferior gaming performance for your money.

We could knock the CPU down a notch and fit a slightly better video card, but given the lower power consumption and better performance with the current choice versus previous Budget Boxes, we feel this is a viable combination. Individual Budget Box builders can make the call on extra GPU performance.

Sound, communications

Network card: none (on-board)Sound card: none (on-board)

Onboard sound and gigabit Ethernet work well enough for almost all Budget Box users.

Those seeking more can look at the Asus Xonar DSX or the higher-end Xonar DX for audio. The list of alternatives is fairly short at the moment, and a discrete sound card is decidedly not critical to the Budget Box.